Delegates at a global tobacco control meeting that ended Saturday should be congratulated for taking last-minute decisions that will spare millions of people globally from death due to tobacco use, according to the civil society Framework Convention Alliance (FCA).

Representatives of Parties to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) also stood firm against relentless efforts by the tobacco industry to steer them away from adopting measures that would tackle the tobacco epidemic.

If current trends do not change, tobacco use will kill 1 billion people this century, most of them in the developing world.